"Dad!
You're bleeding! Do you need me to call an ambulance?" my eldest
daughter asked, business-like, focused, anticipating and prioritizing
several thousand possible contingencies, and mentally formulating the
necessary procedural steps to move the most sensible alternative
forward into reality.
She
was like that. Good to have around in an emergency. Or anytime.
"Daddy!"
her younger sister cried, crouching beside me on the ground next to
the youngest and putting her hand to the wound.
"Ow!"
I said. She jerked her hand away like she'd been burned.
"Sorry!"
"Is
there anything leaking out besides blood?" I asked.
"You
mean like brain-matter?"
"Yeah,
basically."
She
looked again, critically, objectively, able to put her initial
emotional tsunami aside.
"No."
"OK
then, no ambulance."
I
met my wife's eyes at that moment. Years and years of knowing each
other - living day-to-day in each other's company, raising our
daughters, bearing each other's burdens, pains, triumphs, defeats,
joys, and sorrows - meant that everything was communicated
wordlessly in that split-second glance.
It
is an intimacy and understanding that only a long investment of time
together can yield, augmented to an inconceivable depth by our shared
faith in Christ.
"You
should get checked out," she said with a calm that I knew she
did not feel.
Our
daughters made room for her next to me, something she always,
consciously, sacrificially, did for them, knowing how important, and
short, time was between fathers and daughters.
I
am sure we made quite a tableau crouched there together in our front
yard; four beautiful females of various ages and one aging, crumpled
and bleeding gnome.
"I
have a hard head," I reminded her.
"What
happened?" the youngest asked, calmer now, the embodiment of
sympathy.
"Just
a rock thrown out by a dump truck," I answered, feeling less,
well, crumpled with each passing second.
I
went through a list of possible bad symptoms in my head: no
dizziness, no nausea, no headaches beyond the gash in my temple, no
shock, the bleeding was subsiding as my wife compressed a cloth
against it - I don't know when or where she obtained it.
In
short, I had just been knocked unconscious for what seemed like years
but was probably less than a couple of seconds. I'd been through
worse in my younger years.
"Are
you OK, Daddy? Did you break the driveway?"
I
smiled. It was what I always asked when one of them fell, or got
hurt, in the course of life. It was my lame attempt to distract them
momentarily from their pain, and enabled me to assess the seriousness
of their injury. If they laughed or got annoyed, then I knew it was
probably not life threatening.
"No,"
I said. "But that rock will never be the same. It's over there
by the hedge." I pointed where I knew it had landed, having seen
it come to rest while disembodied.
I
thought that thought like such things crossed my mind daily.
"Can
you stand?" my wife asked.
In
answer, I lumbered upward, involuntarily groaning at the effort.
On
two feet again, I adjusted my glasses, grimacing at how they now
felt, misshapen on my rapidly swelling and tender face.
I
remembered my experience in full. Was it a dream? A vision? An
actual, objective event?
I
didn't know. I didn't care, because whatever it was, it increased my
longing for Heaven and my love for my Lord, and my thankfulness for
all His glorious gifts.
"You're
just standing there," my eldest pointed out.
I
looked at her, so utterly grateful for her presence, for the
privilege of having her, and all her sisters, in my life.
I
turned toward my wife and my tears began to flow, and she, of all the
other billions of human beings in the world, knew precisely
what I was feeling without me having to say a word; another of His
amazing gifts.
And
I was ushered inside, surrounded by the people who cared for me the
most, and I knew, beyond any shadow of doubt, now and forever, that I
was loved.
And
whenever my work on-planet was done, however long it took to
complete, there was awaiting for me a Place and a Person, where, and
in whom, nothing of value or goodness was ever lost.
Ever.
© Bill Lilley 2011, 2013
